


Captain Analise Middleton

by OfTheFalls



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Pirates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 09:03:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfTheFalls/pseuds/OfTheFalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story take place during the Golden Age of Pirating (late 17th Century). Captain Analise (Anne) Middleton is the pirate captain of the French galleon ship, the Notre Marie. After a narrow escape from the Spanish Armada, her ship mysteriously ends up in a strange fog from which a single grey creature appears. This story is a recount of the adventures that followed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Captain Analise Middleton

Ch I:

The year is 1653 AD, two hundred years before the Victorian era and three years after the start of what would later be historically known as the Golden Age of Piracy. Crews of rebellious French men have begun their piratical crusades against the Spanish colonies and cargo ships in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, basing their exploits out of Jamaica and Tortuga (both islands just south of modern day Florida, USA).

Amongst them works the occasional rogue Briton, including Captain Analise (Anne) Middleton and First Mate Jack Middleton, a sibling duo operating on the French galleon ship dubbed _Notre_ _Marie_. How these two came to command such a ship is a very long and interesting story, but it is irrelevant to this tale. All one really needs to know is that the _Notre Marie_ eventually earned its nickname _Bloody Mary_ and that Jack just so  clumsily happened to get himself and half of the crew captured by a Spanish naval ship during a maritime heist of a cargo ship. It is here that this recount of piratical events begins.

“Your neck. Your [censored] NECK.” Despite Anne’s possession of her lovely lady voice, her simple and somewhat incomplete threat seemed no less daunting to the water-bogged crewmember than if a burly back-alley fisticuffs expert had issued the same verbal intimidation. Of course, a part of him knew he had no reason to be afraid. For one, Anne was always quite irritable around this time of the moon cycle, though none of the men on board could ever guess why1. Secondly, she technically wasn’t allowed to “off” any of the sailors for anything less than crimes against the crew. After all, Anne had been elected Captain because she knew best how to keep all of them out of Davy Jones’s locker for as long as Providence would allow; sometimes, even longer.

But even as this rational thought process confidently strolled through the gardens of _le cerveau_ , the sailor found himself taking a small step away from his captain’s fury and putting a hand to the cutlass sheathed in his belt. Anne could be quite daunting when she wanted to be. Here was an instance where every part of her seemed to literally _burn_ with ill temperament. Her eyes, the metallic color of freshly polished copper, seemed to shimmer with an internal flame. It was much like that of a blacksmith’s fire, whose heat distorted the sight of the objects behind it and made them seem to wobble and fluctuate.

The occasional salty gust of ocean air toyed with whatever strands of her light amber brown hair that had managed to escape the confines of her bun and her faded black tricorne hat2, causing them to whip about like tongues of flame around her sun-stained face. Yes, sun-stained. Her skin had long parted from the realms of the “sunburned”, settling on a bronze-colored tan from so many hours of working under the hot Caribbean sun.

Between her tall, muscular stature and her fiery anger, our poor crewmember was feeling quite overwhelmed. At least her slender, calloused fingers had not gone to one of the three pistols secured in her baldric, nor had they strayed to either of the two cutlasses in the belt around her hip. Even Anne knew better than to shoot the messenger, even if he’d been the bearer of bad news.

“You ‘ave exactly thir’y merciful seconds to tell me _exactly_ ‘ow this ‘appened and ‘ow you managed to escape remarkably unscathed,” she snapped, her copper eyes narrowing.

The sailor jumped to it immediately, making sure to stress the fact that the failed raid was entirely Jack’s fault and not his own. As he finished his tale by recounting his theft of the Spanish lifeboat and his return to the _Bloody Mary_ , he quietly noted that he’d gone well over the thirty second allowance. Anne didn’t seem to notice though.

“Roight then. No doubt they be ‘eaded to the nearest port for repairs,” Anne replied, switching to planning mode as she turned and addressed the rest of the spectating crew. “We ‘ead ‘em off, finish wot Jack stah’ed and then get the bloody ‘ell away from this luckless slice of sea.” A quick glare around at the crew set them all into a murmur of agreement before they all scattered like rats to their posts under the sharp orders from their captain.

The journey to the Spanish naval ship put Anne in more of a sour mood, for the absence of Jack, their most experienced navigator, proved to be an inconvenience. She was glad to finally hear the bellow of the lookout in the crow’s nest, who had spotted the Spanish Galleon off the starboard-side bow. As the two ships passed each other, cannons ablaze and crews in the tumultuous uproar of impending combat, a mass of men leapt from the _Bloody Mary_ and swarmed the decks of _La Doncella_. And so the battle began…

…And then very quickly ended. No sooner had Anne jumped aboard the galleon than the Spanish ship captain had been captured. And everyone knows that capturing the captain is just as binding as a child capturing the flag during their recess games. With the captain held at sword point and the crew tied up and deposited in the center of the well-polished deck, Anne was able to venture down into the galley and reclaim what was hers.

“JACK, YOU BLOODY IDIOT!”

“Good to see you too, Anna.” He presented the endearing nickname with a calm air as Anne and two others went about cutting the bonds of the shamed prisoners. Out of all the prisoners there, Anne was sure to cut Jack free last, for she felt the prolonged wait was the least he deserved for being captured in the first place. As he waited he squirmed uncomfortably, testing his bonds for the umpteenth time in another attempt to liberate himself on his own. Finally, Anne stood before him, arms crossed over her ribcage as she glared down at him.

Anne still wondered on occasion how Jack still managed to keep his own handsome youthful appearance despite the numerous sunburns that had been inflicted upon his face and torso over the years. Not to mention the toughened callouses that made his hands less than “baby butt soft” and the scar over his cheek bone. It all made him look… well, actually rather rugged; especially with that fresh gash just over his left eyebrow. He would have to tend to that when he returned to the _Mary_. With a sigh, Anne crouched down before him and lowered her fingers to rest on the hilt of the sheathed dirk tucked away in her boot. With a quick flick of her wrist and careful swipe, she severed the ropes just enough for Jack to manage the rest on his own.

“There. I do ‘ope you ‘ave somefink to show for all the bother yeh’ve caused.” She narrowed her bright copper eyes as she waited for a reply from her first mate who seemed to have grown quite bashful as he stared back. As he timidly and haltingly began to shake his head, a rumbling growl of annoyance bubbled up in Anne’s throat which soon morphed into an outright snarl. The words that followed are of the most vulgar and piratical sort, so I shall only bother to mention the swift smack that Jack received upside his blonde-haired cranium.

**Author's Note:**

> General Footnotes:
> 
> 1\. Irritable around this time of the moon cycle: If you need a footnote to explain this, then you’re probably also a man.  
> 2\. More on Anne’s clothes:  
> The wind did not overlook the clothes covering her tall stature and had no trouble ruffling the baggy “bishop” sleeve style on her poet shirt. For those of you who are now feeling quite lost in your attempt to understand this account, I shall pause in my narrative to explain the “poet shirt” to you. After all, most any 17th century gentleman or pirate is bound to be found wearing one.  
> Think back to those dull educational videos you viewed in English class. There is a poet sitting at his bulky writing desk, quill touched to parchment as he scrawls away by the light of a single wax candle. Now think of his shirt. The collar goes all the way down to the middle of his ribcage, but it does not hang open to display his hairy man chest to the world. Instead, it is held closed by a cloth cord that weaves through either side and ends at the top, similar to how one weaves a shoelace through one of their sneakers. Since this gentleman is not in public, he has not snugly tied the two ends of the cords into a bow, but has instead left them to hang. As an unfortunate result, we can see a bit of his hairy man chest anyway. The sleeve of his shirt is baggy while the sleeve’s cuff is tight. If the poet would pause for us and stand with his arms hanging at his sides, you would see that this combination of baggy and tight gives the bottom of the sleeve a mushroom appearance. Thank you, nameless poet, for your assistance.   
> Now, I might as well take a moment to describe what covers our Captain’s stately derrière so that you may have the full mental image of the apparel of her and her crew. To your dear narrator’s dismay, I cannot find the exact name of the style of her trousers. Oh Google, why must you fail me thusly?   
> On the internet, Anne’s pants are called by many different names: knickers, breeches, bloomers, etc. We shall settle on “pirate pants”. For your mental picture, imagine a brown, baggier version of the nameless poet’s sleeves that have been sewed together to make pants. They only reach the mid-calf and are meant to be worn with knee-high socks, but Anne is a pirate and therefore against all of sock-kind unless she is wearing a particularly chaffing pair of sturdy leather boots.  
> Now then… Back to our narrative…  
> 3\. More on his accent: He seemed to breathe out each word, pronouncing the ‘H’ in “what” so that it sounded more like a “hwat”. With each ‘R’ he uttered, his tongue curled in slight excess. If it had gone a little further, he would’ve been completely rolling his ‘R’ like a Spaniard. With the attention that his mouth paid to each ‘R’, it seemed to almost entirely forget the ‘W’s. His lips hardly pulled inward to make the ‘W’ sound while his tongue also put extra enunciation on the ‘T’. It was a strange accent indeed.  
>    
> Dictionary of Foreign and Otherwise Unfamiliar Terms:
> 
> French Terms:  
> Notre Marie: Meaning “Our Mary” in French. It is a reference to the Virgin Mary and the devout Christian attitude of the French in that era.  
> Le cerveau: The brain
> 
> Spanish Terms:  
> Repugnante: Disgusting  
> Seniorita Pirata: Miss Pirate  
> Dios mio: My God
> 
> Sailor Terminology:  
> Davy Jone’s Locker: An idiom for the bottom of the sea; the state of death among drowned sailors.
> 
> Clothing:*  
> Baldric: A weapons belt worn over the shoulder like a sash.  
> Tricorne hat: A typical naval hat whose brim is turned up to form three points which act as gutters during rainfall to divert the water away from the wearer’s face. It is worn with one point facing forward. “Tricorne” means “three corners”.  
> *See General Footnotes for an explanation on the style of Anne’s shirt and pants.
> 
> Weapons:  
> Blunderbuss: A short-barreled large-bored gun with a flared muzzle, used at short range.  
> Cutlass: A short sword with a slightly curved blade, formerly used by sailors.  
> Pistols of the 17th Century: These pistols are made of wood and are curved so that there is no clear distinction between the handle and the barrel. See the title page or any Pirates of the Caribbean movie for a reference.


End file.
